Leave A Comment

Comics A.M. | Hedge fund is backing Stan Lee Media’s Disney lawsuit

Legal | Forbes profiles Michael Wolk, a lawyer who’s organized the financial backing for Stan Lee Media’s prolonged, and so far unsuccessful, multibillion-dollar lawsuits against Marvel and Disney over the rights to the characters co-created by Stan Lee. Wolk’s primary investor is Elliott Management, one the nation’s largest hedge funds. SLM, which is no longer affiliated with its co-founder and namesake, asserts Lee didn’t properly assign ownership of the works to Marvel, and that Disney didn’t file its Marvel agreement with the U.S. Copyright Office. “We are in the right here,” says Wolk, who’s not actually a Stan Lee Media shareholder. “No court has ever addressed or ever decided who is the owner of the characters — all of the prior litigation got dismissed for reasons that have nothing to do with who owns the characters.” [Forbes.com, via The Beat]

History | A researcher at the University of Illinois says she has evidence that Fredric Wertham altered the words of his research subjects, and some of the facts as well, in the writing of Seduction of the Innocent. [University of Illinois News Bureau]

Creators | Neal Adams talks about his long career as an artist, which started with him copying his Old Maid cards at the age of six and has taken him through stints drawing Superman, Batman and the X-Men, despite the fact that when he originally went looking for work, in the 1950s, he was told not to bother because the industry would be dead within a year. [The Abington Journal]

Creators | Michael Cavna talks to the Penny Arcade team of Mike Krahulik, Jerry Holkins and Robert Khoo about Strip Search, their American Idol-type reality show featuring budding cartoonists. [Comic Riffs]

History | KC Carlson interviews comics historian John Wells, whose American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960-1964 is out this week from TwoMorrows Publishing. [Comics Worth Reading]